Paul Greengrass‘s on-again, off-again affair with DreamWorks’ The Trial of the Chicago 7 is, well, off again. The Captain Phillips director has just left the Aaron Sorkin-penned drama, two months after we heard he was in talks and five years after he originally started circling. Hit the jump to find out what happened.

Someone took a look at Steven Spielberg‘s day planner and spilled the details about the legendary director’s upcoming film schedule. Apparently Spielberg is eyeing a September 2008 start for Tintin, the big screen performance-capture adaptation of the popular Belgian comic-strip hero (and his faithful dog Snowy).

After which he will immediately begin work on the long-gestating Abraham Lincoln biopic Lincoln in early 2009. Spielberg is rushing the project into production so that “it can also open in the same year as Lincoln’s 200th anniversary which comes round then.” Spielberg also tells FOCUS magazine that the production of Tintin would not be threatened by the possible upcoming actor’s strike.

“That doesn’t affect us as it is an animation film with motion capture technology,” he said.

It’s interesting how that works. I’m wondering if SAG may change their rules on this type of production in the future. This also confirms previous reports that Spielberg has but Chicago Seven on the back-burner so that the screenplay can be worked on further. I’m still getting the impression that Chicago Seven might be one of those projects which could easily fall into development heck. Spielberg gets offered all sorts of new interesting opportunities each day, and it would be easy for this project to be passed by.